OF THE WRETCHED MISTAKES I made when first teaching, perhaps my favorite occurred over what is known as the cosmic graph. And because there is a great deal of justice in this world, I got what I deserved.

“What’s this?” I asked, when critiquing a piece.

“My cosmic graph.”

An actual bar graph had been inserted into the copy. Yes, that’s right—a bar graph. What I had intended to explain was that right around the fourth paragraph, the writer must tell the reader what the piece is about—what’s at stake, what’s up in the air, what to value if it’s taken away.

By that time in an essay (and even sooner in a blog post), readers must know at least that or they get nervous, as one lovely image turns into another, and we panic, wondering how many of these fine details are going to be on the test. Sometimes this cosmic graph is the literary equivalent of a pan shot from the movies, where the camera pulls from the close-up scene of a woman crying at a table, and suddenly you see her in the farmhouse, in the town, in the world, or at least where you need to be for you to understand where we are on the planet.

Writing something like “Douglas Manor, in the nineteen-seventies, was a place that even John Cheever might find curiously amoral” might do it, or “Love is in fact love when alteration finds” would be fine as well.

Sometimes a cosmic graph says something direct like “This is a love story.” Perhaps it’s “I never thought I’d fall in love,” or something slightly obtuse like “Much like faith, perhaps patriotism is a delicatessen plan,” or, after several paragraphs describing your mother’s progressive decline “It was Alzheimer’s disease.”

But in short pieces of memoir, give us a cosmic graph, and we’ll have the guide we need to read on.